I.H.T. OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Words We Can Use, and Those We Can Not

By MURONG XUECUN

Published: February 24, 2011

Murong Xuecun, the pen name of Hao Qun, 37, is one of China's early Internet writers, best known for the novel ''Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu.'' Recently, a nonfiction work, ''The Missing Ingredient,'' about going underground to uncover a pyramid scheme, won him the 2010 People's Literature Prize, but he was unexpectedly barred from making an acceptance speech. He delivered it instead on Tuesday before the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong:

If I am not mistaken, the People's Literature magazine ''special action award'' was not bestowed for my literary achievement, but for my courage. This is an unusual honor for me as a writer. It's a bit like praising a football player for being a good street fighter.

I'm embarrassed because I am not a brave person. Genuine bravery for a writer is not about jousting with a pyramid-scam gang. It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer's conscience.

Actually, I am a coward. I say only what is safe to say, and I criticize only what is permissible to criticize.

I finished my latest book some time ago, and the most important reason for the delay in publication was that I came up against a rather peculiar editor.

Over the course of two months, he and I had some interesting verbal duels. I smashed a cup on the floor, I spoke a few strong words to him. I furiously punched the wall at home, but finally I capitulated.

This editor is a cautious person. Whatever the circumstances, the first thing he thinks of is safety. In his view, it would have been preferable not to publish my book at all; this would be the safest way.

Even if he was forced to publish it, he told me it was best to avoid talking about anything real, because anything real entails risk. The moment I had opinions, I became a danger. I disagreed with him, but I know he is not the only one to hold this view.

My new book tells the story of my time spent undercover inside an illegal pyramid-sales organization. It included this phrase: ''This group, mostly made up of people from Henan, was called the 'Henan network.'''

To the editor, this harmless sentence aroused safety issues because the phrase ''Henan people'' carries an air of regional discrimination. He suggested that we rework the phrase as: ''They were all Henan peasants, and so this network was called the Henan network, and was made up of mostly Henan people.'' I asked him why. He said that by changing ''people'' to ''peasants,'' more sophisticated Henan people would not feel slighted.

I tried to bargain with him: ''In my original version there were two sentences, it would be too wordy if there were three. Why don't we cut the first one?'' He thought about it for ages and then agreed, and so we arrived at the final version: ''This group, called the 'Henan network,' was made up mostly of Henan people.'' In the end, all that changed was the word order.

As you may have guessed, this editor didn't just cut a few words like ''Henan people,'' but also many sentences, paragraphs and even whole sections and chapters.

From my many years' experience in writing and publishing, I could compile a Sensitive Words Glossary, in which you would certainly find the words ''system,'' ''law,'' ''government,'' as well as a large number of other nouns, several verbs, quite a few adjectives, and even a few special numbers. The glossary would also include all names of religions, all names of important people, all countries, including of course China, and also the phrase ''Chinese people.''

In many places in my new book, ''Chinese people'' was changed to ''some people,'' or even ''a small number of people.'' If I critiqued some part of traditional Chinese culture, the editor would change it to ''the bureaucratic culture of ancient China.'' If I brought up anything contemporary, he would ask me instead to refer to Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, or Wu Zetian, a notorious Tang dynasty empress, or Europe of the Middle Ages.

Well, the reader may be right: At this time, in this place, Chinese writing exhibits symptoms of a mental disorder. I am not a Chinese writer so much as a person with a mental disorder.

Some people will say that one shouldn't use the case of one particular editor to damn the system. I agree, but still I want to ask: What makes a paranoid editor? I confess that his fear infected me. I would also ask what kind of system could make me, a law-abiding citizen, a writer, live in indescribable fear?

There are journalists here, and perhaps some others, who may report later that I have delivered an angry speech. Well, I am not angry. I believe I am not alone; this is the situation faced by all of China's writers. The fear I feel is not just the fear felt by one writer, but by all of our writers.